


til the sands of time run dry

by A_Starry_Night



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27223246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Starry_Night/pseuds/A_Starry_Night
Summary: She glanced over at him. "I'll be known as DS Ellie Miller this time. And you?"He huffed, exasperated and slightly amused. "DI Alec Hardy. Because apparently if we're inhabiting Dorset, England we've got to have as many allusions to Thomas Hardy as possible."
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 25
Kudos: 44





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> I really have NO IDEA where this story came from, except that my mind is apparently still on a magical/supernatural kick and I have no control of what spills out of my mind when it's two in the morning. This really won't be a very long story, but I'm not going to guess this time and say I know how many chapters it's going to be.
> 
> Title is a bastardized quote from a choir arrangement of Robert Burns' poem 'Red Red Rose' that I haven't thought in over twelve years. Which somehow still makes sense as a title when I apply it to the direction of this story.

She knew that He was close; He always was, of course. They were intertwined indefinitely, two sides of the same coin that was Existence—there could not be one without not the other. In that way They were aware of each other always, intangible except for those few moments in Time they took human shape. But this nearness was of a physical type, a calming breath before the game began.

A Game was all Existence was. They were neither of Them truly malicious beings—They were simply a state of being and the inevitable conclusion that followed it. In that way They were heartless, but They did not lack compassion for the human lives They existed with, and this current Narrative was going to be a harder one than others.

“Thought I might find you here.”

She looked up from the flowers She was inspecting; their leaves were beginning to droop with lack of water, but as She ran Her fingers over the soft velvety softness of their petals they perked up again. She raised an eyebrow critically as she took in His appearance. “Scottish this time? Really? I thought you’d had enough of that in the seventeenth century.”

“Oi, I’ll have you know the accent is brilliant, it’s just the incessant anger issues and such I don’t like.” He shrugged easily and sat down beside Her, a tall lanky man with reddish hair and eyes as dark as his usual garb, and took in the sight of the plant She had just revived silently, waiting for Her to break the silence.

“You’re late, you know.” Her mouth lifted in a vaguely amused smile at the joke. It was impossible to be late for either of Them, but it was still nice to laugh. Wasn’t that something the humans had recently started saying? Laughter is key to healthy living. 

As usual, He heard Her humor but didn’t dwell upon it. He had other things on His mind. “The boy’s dead. His body will be found on the beach in the morning, and We’ll both need to be there in order for the Narrative to work out correctly.”

He was always focused on the Narrative, always dwelling on what had to happen; of course with His particular job He had to do so, but sometimes She wished She could see Him laugh. He hadn’t done much of anything other than travel back and forth obsessively the last few years—She supposed it was His way of coping. He hadn’t been the same since Hitler’s death camps in Germany and Poland, or Stalin’s massacres of his own people, and while, yes, She’d been there too, She had had the easier task of looking after those who made it to the next day. They were still within Her dominion after all. But He had had to truly see and feel and hear the screams, the brittle limbs and burning flesh, He had had to carry each one off Himself for their next point in the journey. 

Whatever that next point in that journey was, neither of Them knew. Theirs was not to understand it.

She glanced over at him, mindful of the necessary distance between Them. “Of course. I’ll be known as Detective Inspector Ellie Miller this go ‘round. And You?”

A humph, exasperated and vaguely amused. “Detective Inspector Alec Hardy. Because apparently if We’re inhabiting Dorset, England we’ve got to have as many allusions to Thomas Hardy as possible.”

“Ooh, snarky. I have a feeling You and I are not meant to get along this time.”

“No,” He said quietly. “I don’t suppose we are.” He straightened up again, His attention immediately caught by what She could sense too as another thread of existence stretched too thin. “Bollocks. I’ll see you at the beach later, yeah?”

“Of course.” She nodded as He stood, but then stopped Him before He could leave. “How was the boy, when you collected him tonight?”

“Daniel Latimer?” He stood in silence for a moment, clearly having to think back about it. Of course, with the amount of others He’d had to collect tonight it wasn’t truly surprising. “Frightened. Most of them are anymore, but it all happened so fast… he didn’t really have the time to be so before I moved him along.”

He would have been gentle; He always was with the children. It was one of the reasons why They got along so well—They both cared about Existence’s most vulnerable players. He was gone before She could respond, but She hadn’t planned on saying anything anyway. Daniel Latimer was gone now. She would continue on as She always did, his emptied space in the world already taken up by a newly-born baby across the pond in Canada, but She nonetheless took a moment to mourn for him and his lost potential.

It was all the Narrative; it was meant to happen like this, She knew that perfectly well. But that didn’t stop Her from wondering sometimes.

Looking down at the ground now, She sighed and shook her head seeing what He had done. “Sneak,” She said, and stood up to brush the dirt off Her jeans. The sun would be rising soon above this little seaside town, the pieces were falling into place, and She wasn’t where She needed to be yet. Settling Her orange coat more firmly over Her shoulders, She turned and started walking down the cliffs, leaving Her now-dead husk of the flower behind Her to rattle dryly in the wind.


	2. Part II

Danny Latimer had been laying exactly where He had said he would be, but that wasn’t where the interesting part began. It wasn’t even terribly surprising witnessing the Latimer family’s terrible grief when they were told their son was dead. Her tears were genuine in that moment in the house, even if they weren’t for the reasons everyone but Him suspected.

She supposed She was going to have to start calling Herself by Her given name of Ellie Miller. It would prove too confusing otherwise. And He by His, but that wasn’t a problem.  
Be that as it was, Her tears were a reflection of the Latimers’ own, a mirror of Her function in Existence, the happiness and joy as well as the sadness of its loss. It was easy in that way then to buy into this story of Ellie Miller, longtime friend of Beth Latimer, lifelong resident of Broadchurch, mother of two boys, and the wife of Danny Latimer’s murderer.

Once back in the car to drive back to the station, He handed Her a tissue wordlessly and waited until She had finished drying Her face. “You’re fitting quite well into the Narrative, you know. You nearly had _Me_ convinced you’re nothing but an ordinary human.” He stopped the tissue box from sliding off the dashboard and onto the floor with barely a glance in its direction.

“Bastard,” She retorted with a small smile. “I’d forgotten You were always so good at the backhanded compliments.”

“And _You_ are surprisingly unkind.”

She rolled Her eyes. “What was that saying the humans have again? Oh yes. 'Life isn’t kind.'”

“ _Cliché_!” He muttered, sneering at Her choice of words.

“Really?” She raised an eyebrow as They buckled in and started on Their way. “Here’s another one for You, then, if You think You’re so clever: ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’”

“ _Damn_ it! We agreed not to use that one anymore!”

She laughed at His look of disgust and focused on the task of driving. It was such a novel experience, since neither of Them had been in a physical form for several centuries, and She found She quite liked it. The police station was just as interesting being able to touch and hear and feel it, and the feel of all the people within it was a beautiful hum of energy. 

It was once again a perfect compliment to the Narrative, of Ellie’s easy companionship and friendliness, just as His natural aloofness and grim undertaking of things reflected Hardy’s coldly focused and jaded view of the world. It wasn’t hard at all to slip into these given aliases and start into the investigation.

And that still wasn’t when the interesting part began.

~/~/~/~/~

“Danny’s told me,” Steve Connelly told them in the office as They perused CCTV. “It has something to do with water.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” He snapped, with real irritation, and She glared at Him warningly. 

“Now, sir,” She said quietly, sharply, “I don’t suppose it would hurt to ask this man a few more questions, would it?” Absentmindedly She reached out and prevented a stack of papers from toppling over the edge of the desk without breaking eye contact with Connelly. She smiled at him reassuringly. “Would you be willing to do that for us, Mr. Connelly?”

Of course he did, and while He sat in quiet disbelief at what the man was telling Them, She listened to what Connelly was really saying. The poor man had no idea what he was doing, or what he had access to, and She was preparing to ask him about supposedly hearing from Danny Latimer when the recording device beside her screeched and flickered on and off. 

“But I- there was something there—” Connelly stammered, staring wide-eyed at the space above it. “A person—”

“Just a glitch,” He said dismissively, preparing to stand, and therefore Connelly missed the vicious glare He shot at that empty space. “Just like you seem to be experiencing. I don’t want to see you in here again with such a ridiculous story.”

She waited until they were alone again in His office (and wasn’t that also something novel to think of?) to speak again. “What’s really bothering you?” No one knew better than He did that the dead had voices, after all.

He sat in troubled silence for a long time, idly flipping a pen in His long fingers as He pondered a response. “It’s impossible that Connelly is telling the truth. Danny couldn’t have told him anything. And yet…”

When He trailed off without finishing the thought, She crossed Her arms and gave Him a significant look. “And yet what?”

“And yet he still knew things only Danny would have known. And the fact of him being near water when it happened… it could have been a lucky guess, but what if it wasn’t?”

He was thinking something over, something only He truly understood; She stood for a long moment waiting to see if He would continue on, but when nothing came She shook Her head and left to leave Him to it. He’d come to Her as soon as He came up with something, after all.

When it came down to it, though, She thought of something first. “Oh—excuse me.” She stopped and stepped out of the way with an apologetic smile. “So sorry.”

The ghost of the old woman She had almost brushed up against nodded in thanks and continued on her way; she was clearly one of the latest arrivals, but Ellie wasn’t sure when she had passed. It really wasn’t all that important, anyway. “You know this is going to cause another influx of ghost sightings,” She remarked as She stepped into His office. It was late night now and most of the people were gone for the day—which was good because it was becoming progressively harder to hide the presences of a few dozen souls as they waited in limbo for access to their Afterlife. 

He glanced up from the paperwork in front of Him, for all the world appearing as nothing more than a tired man working far too many hours on not enough sleep. “Yeah, but it’s been awhile since the last ones, and most people nowadays come up with every excuse for it not to be ghosts.” 

“Any difficulties for the souls this time?” They were not of Her dominion after all when they passed on.

“A few of the adults tried to argue with Me that this wasn’t real.” His voice was as dry enough to scrape bone, a gallows’ humor that most never suspected that He had. “A few more tried to barter their way back to their bodies, which also got them nowhere.”

“Kids?” Her voice was soft.

He nodded, expression softening. Motioning with His free hand to the space below the desk, She stooped and found a few souls of children staring back up at Her from between His legs. He was endlessly patient and gentle with any child. She smiled sadly at them but didn’t say anything, and they didn’t attempt to either. 

“I’ve had a thought.”

“Am I supposed to be surprised by that?” He sat up straighter, catching her gaze as she stood back up. “What is it?”

“It’s not My territory, and I know that, luv,” She said quietly, and acting so outside of Their current Narrative really made Him pay attention and listen now, “but there has been the occasional instance where a certain soul does not stay where it belongs after You have gathered it to the Afterlife.”

He stilled. She doubted He was even breathing. Then: “Cover for Me,” He said, standing from the chair. Without another word He left, and She watched Him from the window as He hurried out from the station and outside, where several more souls walked and gathered in expectation. They followed idly after Him, a tide of incorporeal energy; a little girl’s ghostly fingers tugged at the edge of His jacket, looking for all the world like a gust of wind blowing at His clothes, but He bent down and picked her up in His arms so He could continue walking.

She smiled gently at the sight before She shook herself and reminded Herself of the Narrative—She was to go to the home of Ellie Miller and be with Her own family. To lay beside a murderer was nothing so horrifying—Death was a normal part of Life, no matter its cause; there truly was nothing new under the sun. Joe Miller would be found out soon enough, and he would one day leave Her presence to join His, as Danny had been forced to do at a much younger age.

She was up half the night anyway at the hospital watching over the few births that were happening, listening to the babies’ first screams and breaths. There was a tree standing close to the toad with a root system accidentally damaged by a road crew, and She coaxed some strength into it, convinced its leaves to brighten with green and its bark to harden and its roots to stretch out healthy and whole again.

He met up with Her again the next morning when She was heading to the station, the river of souls still ambling after Him idly, happy to do nothing but walk and stare in silence. All except one. She blinked at the small ghost of the dark-haired boy following almost literally at His heels, and this boy stared back at Her with a peculiar look on his familiar face.

“I hate it when You’re right, you know that?” He asked quietly as He reached Her side. 

“You don’t,” She responded primly, “because You’re right about things as much as I am. We have to be to fulfill our respective jobs.”

That garnered Her a slight upturn of His mouth, but like always His attention was focused more on the said jobs. “Either way,” He said softly, “I’ve failed spectacularly at mine, because somehow Danny Latimer is still here.”

“Who _are_ you both?” Danny Latimer demanded at that moment, glancing between Them, and She looked back at him in astonishment. 

“Do you—you’re actually speaking to Me?” It was a dumb question and She knew it as soon as she asked it, but really—this was unheard of. 

“You’re standing here, aren’t you?” Danny asked with a frown. “Or are you just one of those people who can only hear me and not see I’m actually _here_?”

“Oh no, I can see you perfectly; it’s normally those like you who never acknowledge _Me_.” 

“Don’t start a debate,” He cut in sharply to the boy, who looked to be thinking of doing exactly that. “I’ve explained to you what’s happened, and now She and I have got the Narrative to think of. Come on.”

He started on His way again and She watched Him go for a few paces before turning back to Danny. “He’s blunt like that,” She said simply, not sure if the boy needed or even wanted an explanation. “I suppose He is allowed to be—He’s got the final word, after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still find this story to be one of the strangest I've ever written, and I'm sorry if it reads strange, too-- Danny showing up as a ghost was something that has allowed the storyline to form in a specific direction, but I'm not sure if it's still able to work, so please let me know if it does. I'd like to know if this should just be abandoned or if you'd like to see more of it.


	3. Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Truthfully, I love the metal image of Death!Alec being a sort of dad to all these little ghost children, and I can't help myself.

“No, sweetheart, don’t pull on that…” Absentmindedly He grabbed hold of the ghost of the little girl and hefted her up into His lap, all without looking away from the computer screen. She rested her head against His shoulder and twirled a lock of hair around her finger, for all the world looking like a tired child who hadn’t recently been killed by her raging father. 

“I expected you to be a bit…” 

He looked over at Danny, mindful of the ordinary humans seated in the office to speak quietly even with the door shut. “What?”

The boy shuffled awkwardly on the sofa, shrugging. “Well, a bit more… _terrifying_.”

He snorted, unimpressed. “I can be to people who deserve it. Should’ve seen Hitler’s face when I showed up to collect him.” Death was impartial—or at least He was supposed to be—but sometimes He found it cathartic to witness the terror of those truly depraved souls, the ones who had committed such unspeakable acts and _never regretted them_. He looked over at Danny steadily. “I have no reason to be like that with you.”

“Will you be terrifying to Joe when you get him?”

“Would you want Me to be?”

Danny bit his lip; at times it was hard to believe he was merely eleven. “Is it bad of me to say yes?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. I don’t exist by your rules or morals, so I can’t tell you.” He turned back to the paperwork He was supposed to be reading for a long moment. “I suppose it’ll depend on what Joe Miller does when it comes to him being found out.”

“And when will that be?”

The little girl shifted against Him and He automatically tightened His grip on her. Danny’s gaze watched this almost jealously, sadly, and He sighed. “Whenever We get enough evidence to convict him.”

“Why can’t _you_ do anything to get him, then? You’re Death, after all.”

He smiled bitterly, having heard that question put by far too many humans. “I don’t work like that, Danny. I’m merely a state of being, a consequence of an action or illness.” A gift from Life, that was what all these souls were—but that was a concept hard to swallow to those who weren’t Them. “Joe Miller will meet his end one day, and it’s only then that I’ll be there to collect him, but I must not act outside of the perimeters of the Narrative.”

“But what _is_ the Narrative?” Danny asked plaintively, kicking his insubstantial trainers against the sofa. “You and Ellie mention it like it’s God or somethin’, so how come no one’s heard of it?”

Always with the difficult questions. Knowing that there would be no focusing on the job now, He absentmindedly shifted the little girl more firmly against His shoulder and stood to pace along the wall of the office. “It’s—well, it’s the Story that’s happening to the world. Life and Death, Existence, the world—we’re all bound by the rules of the Narrative that we have to act in.”

“Like a fairytale?”

“Like fairytales. But the Narrative is what We exist by—it fills the gaps in the human mind and prevents them from asking questions.”

“Like why Mr. Miller is suddenly married again?”

He nodded. “Exactly.” He could remember the night He had passed through Broadchurch to pick up a soul of a woman wasted by cancer; she had been light both from loss of weight, and the relief of not dealing with the agony of her illness any longer. He could recall too the bitter tears of the man beside her body, and briefly He wondered what it was that had eventually driven Joe Miller to experiment with loving an eleven-year-old boy. The same thing that drove all the others to do similar unspeakable acts, He supposed, but what that was specifically He didn’t know. “I suppose that’s why you acted so confused when seeing Ellie. What do you remember about Irene?”

Danny kicked at the sofa again. “Dunno, really. I know Tom was really upset about it. She was always kind, though, when I spoke to her.”

“There’s never been enough kindness in the world.” Ominous words, He knew, but it was the truth; these ghostly children were proof enough of that.

“ _You’re_ kind.” The little girl’s voice was still partly muffled by his jacket collar (somehow), but she was suddenly focused intently on Him. “I never got cuddles with Daddy, an’ he only paid attention when he was hittin’ me.”

It wasn’t often that He was truly driven to anger, but there it was— _anger_. Oh, He was going to so love picking up the little girl’s father when he did himself in, and hopefully it would be soon. “I wouldn’t go so far as to label Me kind, darlin’,” He told her gently, shifting her a little more firmly against Him, “but thank you for the compliment anyway.”

“Welcome.”

He leaned back to look down at her a better, frowning as a new realization drifted up. “What’s your name? You’ve met Danny, after all, but I don’t remember ever hearing yours.”  
She smiled toothily, delighted by the question. “Daisy,” she said shyly. “Mumma always liked daisies.”

“Hmm. Danny and Daisy.” It was a nice alliterative appeal, and from the way Danny’s head tilted he seemed to be something he might agree with. He stopped beside the sofa and placed her beside the boy, thoughts flying at a million miles an hour. “You do me a favor, Daisy, and you stay close to Danny, yeah? Miller and I have somewhere We need to go.”

“Can we come along?” Leave it to the boy to be infinitely curious; tempted as He was to say yes, He shook His head. 

“Not right now, lad. We’re going to go and talk with Connelly and it’ll help if you’re not there this time.”

It was as close to an admonishment He was going to reach, but Danny understood it anyway. “Didn’t mean to make yours and Ellie’s jobs harder. I just… _Mum_ was there, and she was so _sad_ , and I—”

The grief of a loved one. That He understood very well, but what most people didn’t realize was that the grief was not one-sided, it was not only the living that suffered in the separation. As much as He had tried to shield Danny from the terrible repercussions his death was having on the town, He couldn’t hide Beth and Mark Latimer’s terrible grief—or prevent Danny from responding in kind. As the recently-named Daisy knocked her shoes together, He crouched down in front of the ghost of the murdered boy. “I can’t say what you did was wrong. There have been countless people throughout the centuries whose last thoughts and wishes have been to their family and friends—and sometimes they were fortunate enough to express those before I moved them along. But using Steve Connelly was not the way to do that this time, Danny. Men like him have a gift of sight for the supernatural, but he’ll use his for his own gain—he preys upon the agony of a grieving mother to write and sell his story.”

Danny sat and thought that through for a long moment, his eyebrows drawn into a frown of concentration before finally they quirked with understanding. “Like Joe Miller did to me, you mean.”

Taken aback, He tilted His head and tried to see the logic in that statement. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Danny took a deep breath. “He pretended to be nice, and understanding, and _kind_ like my dad never was—but really he was using me to get something he shouldn’t have.”

“Ah.” Yes, _now_ He got it. “Aye, that’s it. Your mum deserved to hear from you, but not through a man like Connelly. Not when he was just going to use her.”

“Couldn’t you tell her?” Daisy piped up from her seat. “You’re the one lookin’ after us, after all, shouldn’t you tell his mom he’s all right?”

“Afraid I can’t do that, darlin’.” It was a genuine regret. “Sometimes I can. But the Narrative won’t let Me do that this time around. It’s not My place.” As the cold and cynical Hardy, He couldn’t dare say anything about the possibility of the supernatural, or ghosts, or an Afterlife—because Alec Hardy _didn’t_ believe in those things. At Danny’s crestfallen look, He felt the twinge of guilt grow, and He took a deep breath as He stood again. “I’ll work something out for you, though, yeah? Some way to say one last goodbye to your mum.”

“You mean that?”

“I do. After Joe Miller is caught, I’ll do that.”

Danny’s expression cracked with relief and sadness, for a moment appearing older—an echo of the years that had been cut short, the life he might have lived had Joe Miller not decided to be in love with an eleven-year-old boy. “Thank you. I’ll watch over Daisy, then, make sure she stays here until you get back.”

“Thank you.” Reassured now that they would be okay by themselves for a few hours, with several other ghosts around to keep them company, He started for the door and shrugged on His coat. Danny’s quiet voice stopped Him before He turned the handle. 

“You love Ellie, don’t you? Why don’t you say anything?”

His fingers clenched around the handle, his knuckles turning white. The human body truly was a remarkable thing, especially since He felt like His heart was physically aching at the question. “Narrative,” He finally said hoarsely, quietly, and He missed Danny’s regretful look. “It’s never meant to be.”


End file.
